


Glassblowers

by Neurtsy



Category: One Direction (Band), Zayn Malik (Musician)
Genre: Alcohol, Anxiety, Anxiety Attacks, Anxiety Disorder, Drug Use, Drugs, M/M, Mild Smut, NSFW Art, Nude Modeling, Other, Photography, Recreational Drug Use, Social Anxiety
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-16
Updated: 2016-04-16
Packaged: 2018-06-02 12:14:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6565684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neurtsy/pseuds/Neurtsy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>you know when you smoke a lot over the course of a few days or a long weekend and everything runs together and seems to happen at the same time but also feels like the things that happened an hour ago were a lifetime ago, and you end up best friends with some random group of people you didn't know the day before and you blink and they're a permanent fixture in your life by the time you're sober when before there was all this paranoia and fuckery but you sober up and realize everything turned out okay? I wrote this in a week in between working full time holla!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Glassblowers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [babylxxrry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/babylxxrry/gifts).



The back of Harry’s throat scratches and tingles in a slow burn, tapering out to calm as he exhales. 

The joint he’s holding is starting to canoe, and as he tries to get a better grip on it, the paper neatly singes his nail bed back. The cuticles on his right hand are almost entirely bitten down callouses, and he barely feels it, but his hand still flinches for the hell of it. 

One last lungful of smoke edges its way past his lips, and stains the air around him with a grey and gauzy smear. The croaked end of the joint crushing out beneath his shoe signals that the time out he’s given himself is over, and he has to go back inside the apartment. 

The smoke hangs and hums inside his chest, more of an excuse to hold on to than something to actually relax him. 

Inside it doesn’t smell any less like weed, and a ticcing voice in his head points out that it was pushy and pointless for him to have excused himself to the balcony at all. 

No one else mentions it out loud, but the inside of his head won’t shut up about it.

 

The skinny one is railing a line of something off the coffee table. Harry still doesn’t know his name, and it’s nagging at him, every minute passing making it more and more impossible for him to just ask. 

The bigger one - Liam - is passing bored but still critical eyes over Harry, and it makes his stomach knot into uneasy shapes. Lion and tigers and peaks of anxiety. 

His head is feeling thick with thought like cotton balls. He’s trying to remember what they said - Liam and the skinny one - about someone else coming, or coming another time. The room and company feels unfinished, without knowing for certain if more are going to come through the door, and it adds to the sea of disarray swirling inside. Cats in boxes clawing at him. 

 

There’s a bottle of white rum on the coffee table. It’s full at first, then it’s empty, and Liam is pointing a camera at him while the skinny one is peeling his shirt off. 

 

Harry’s back is begging for the sagging cushions of the couch, aching to sit and sink in, but Liam wants a certain angle, so he stays standing. From behind the lens of the camera, he keeps saying it’s artistic, and the angles need to be right, filling the foreground, minimal, clean. 

Harry feels clean as the boy licks past his lips and the flash goes off. He feels clean as he cracks his jaw open and tastes ash and candy. He feels clean and drunk and stoned, like his head is tipping and falling backwards. 

 

Harry learns the skinny one is called Z, after he learns the feeling of his cock pushing between the ring of his curled fingers. 

His head is spinning just enough to make it passable as nice. The rooms turns on an axis, and their bodies fade to a slow waltz. The mania in his skull dwindles, if only temporarily, and he shuts his eyes to shut out the faceless stare of the camera.

A mantra picks up inside his head, a low tempo _it’s alright, it’s alright,_ and soon it’s swarmed over by song lyrics; something he picked up on the bus ride over.

 

He gets a crisp hundred tucked into an envelope and pressed into his hand when it’s all over. 

He finds another bus stop and stands dizzily, head tipped back and trying to find the stars in the light polluted sky.

The cracks in the pavement feel like eggshells underneath his feet. The ride back home rattles his skull against the window. 

 

He jimmies open the door to his apartment. The lock has always stuck, and there’s an art to opening it, a sideways twist and a tug backwards before pushing it at an angle. It always colours his thoughts in a perverse light. Fucking the lock open, wrestling his body through the frame until he’s safe inside, and the street is closed behind him. 

 

His phone is already lighting up with a message from Liam by the time he’s out of the shower, skin tacky as it cools, pulled tight and narrow. 

He scans over it in bed, snaking his feet beneath the covers, and finds it’s strangely formal, a buttoned-down thank you, a dated schedule for next time, a strangely worded encouragement to give some thought to joining them more officially.

His thoughts are running too watered down for _‘next time,'_ and he falls asleep dizzy, sleeps unsoundly, and wakes tired. 

 

He rises tired, too. Ghosts his way through the remainder of the week tired, and the offer to crawl back to that apartment, and turn the arrangement into something closer to full time sounds more and more appealing. He tries to justify his thoughts as rational as blisters burn hole through his soles, but it’s easier to avoid interaction, and he finds himself stalling on texting Liam with a decision, or a reply at all. 

 

Bumping shoulders with him in a bar had been an accident on Harry’s part, and he stood and swayed uncomfortably as Liam had immediately brushed it off and hit him with a modeling offer. Harry was buzzed and uncomfortable, but let Liam slide a drink into his hands and keep pushing. He had a card with a number scrawled across the back, a website link, and enough charm burning behind dark eyes to lower Harry’s guard. 

He fought off his pride and scrolled through the pictures on the website once he made it back home, head several drinks heavier. He finds it to be tame, compared to the images his brain had been conjuring up, runny with alcohol and wild ideas. It’s credible, and passable as actual modeling, and through the insecurity and nervous stomach, he’s almost flattered. It’s artsy, and god knows he’s done worse to still the itch. So he calls the number and agrees to meet up, still drunk, before the nerve to do it fades back into the nerves begging him not to. 

He just wants the money, and he has enough weed that he’s convinced he can trick himself into finding a way to enjoy the glamour too. 

The glamour feels more like grit once he’s actually there, and a lot more gruesome when he’s back home, soaking the stains out of his shirt. 

 

It’s not enough to stop him from going back. 

 

It’s a weird, snaking bus ride, now that he knows the route and isn’t getting off one line and onto another. It carries him as far as the gateway to a close-knit bunch of apartment complexes, and he makes his way towards the side door wondering if it would look any less intimidating by daylight. 

He’s sweating, anxious and hot, and the doorknob is a cool comparison to the stuffy summer air draping itself over the back of his neck, and across his palms. 

There’s another figure walking along the edge of the lawn from the parking lot, winding like a stray cat towards the door. 

Harry leans back against the door to prop it open for him, and the boy slides past, skin tinted grey in the odd light. As he passes with a murmured ‘thanks,’ Harry can smell the summer heat licking off his skin like flames. 

It’s instantly clear to Harry that they’re going the same way, the boy walking with the same flames in his gait down the corridor. Harry hangs back, trying to decide what it was that made him so sure the boy was going to walk around the corner, and stop outside the same apartment. 

He drags his feet along the tiles, and they fuss up rubber squeals. By the time he rounds the corners, the apartment door is just being pulled open, and the boy shouldering his way inside. 

He decides it was the sparks and embers burning underneath his skin. The building felt alive with oxygen, thick flammability that could only draw the desperate and the passionless. Harry keeps walking, mostly just desperate, and a little numb.

 

Liam spots him coming down the hall, and waits by the door, the perceived tension in his stance and shoulders is urging Harry to walk a little faster, and the door shuts behind him. 

The boy from outside wheels to face him when the lock clicks, and gives him a blatant up-down before haughtily crossing the room, making Harry wonder what he’s done. It colours the air in his lungs an uneasy orange, and he tries to breathe it out evenly. 

“Good to see you,” Liam says, suddenly lashing out and gripping Harry’s wrist in a firm shake. His eyes are a little bloodshot, veins running thin from the corners. The bleary colour pulls Harry’s focus away from the other boy, and he tries to coordinate his arm to shake properly. 

“We got some more site royalties after last week,” Liam is saying, his words sliding greasily together. “I have the rest of your money. We can set up deposit details if you think you’re interested in signing with us for a bit.” 

“Yeah, alright, I’ll think about it,” Harry says, tiptoeing the line between polite and obligatory. He’s not sure he wants a direct trail connecting him with the people in this apartment, and also feels unsure he’s important enough for it to matter. 

Slowly crossing into the hall, the other boy twists his head to address Liam, and blatantly ignore Harry.

“Who’s this?” 

“New guy.”   
“What for.”

“I’m testing out new clients.”

“What for.” It’s a rapid and rampant back and forth until Liam sighs and folds his arms over his chest. 

“Fresh face. I don’t want people getting bored of the same thing over and over,” he says dismissively. “Besides, I told you I didn’t need you today.” 

“I’ve been doing Saturday nights here every week for the past four months,” comes the reply, and Harry’s surprised it’s not paired with a spitty hiss and raised hackles. “You said it was steady when you hired me.” 

“Just take a week off. Z gets time off when we shoot your solo shit, so calm down. It’s plenty steady.” Liam’s voice is just as steady, with annoyance and boredom injected in between the gaps.    
“So why are you replacing me,” the other boy says, and it’s a little too cheap and jaded to be deadpan.  
 “Because he’s cheaper and he’s more obedient,” Liam says, administrating a sharp smack to the boy’s shoulder. 

“This is Lou,” he adds for Harry’s benefit. “Lou, Harry.” Lou doesn’t spare him a second glance before shedding his coat and walking further into the apartment. His coat - a tatty dark green army jacket - lies dejected and rumpled on the floor. 

 

From deeper inside the apartment, there’s the sound of a door being pushed open. 

“You told me this fucker wasn’t coming,” Z shouts from down the hall, and Harry flinches at the volume of the smoke-scratched voice. 

“He wasn’t supposed to,” Liam shrugs, twisting the cap off a beer and licking the condensation off the neck. Z comes into the room, Lou in tow, edgily crossing his arms tight against his stomach.

“Then what’s he doing here?” Z levels, and as Harry watches, puffs his chest out and comes to stand a breath away from the shorter boy. 

“Beats me,” Liam says with disinterest. There are tall floor lamps positioned around the couch, and he moves to fiddle with them, dropping the lampshades onto the floor. 

“Coming over uninvited is rude, you know,” Z says, suddenly raising his hands to shove at Lou’s chest, knocking him back a foot or so, before jumping in and catching him in a headlock. “No fucking manners, no fucking manners at all.” Lou’s arms comes to shove and grip tichily against Z’s ribs, and the taller boy grunts and closes his arm tighter around Lou’s neck.

Harry’s feet plant themselves in a panicked and defensive stance as the two, now connected, knock a bar stool onto the floor with a rough clatter. He’s expecting the sound of cartilage against fists, but the sound that comes - a breathy laugh - only jars him further. 

Lou’s grinning from beneath Z’s arm, the strangest kind of fierce glee rippling through his body under the attention. 

It makes no sense to Harry, so he backs away from it, buddying up with Liam, who merely rolls his eyes in their direction. Now just baring their bulbs, the floor lamps are lined up neatly to one side, and their shadows file just as neatly against the far wall. 

 

Once they’ve been readied and ushered onto the set, Harry finds that Z smells like fresh sweat and stale smoke. It’s oddly arousing as Harry tips his head forward to knock against Z’s skull, trying to stay in the proper light as they pose. 

Liam had come at them with a silver-tipped felt pen and drawn patterns against their bare backs, outlining them in black and guiding them into position with careful dips of his hands. 

Harry can’t ignore the way Z’s body turns to melted butter, all yellow and running beneath Liam’s hands. 

By comparison, he feels like a stick of lard, sallow and unyielding, even as he tries his best to make his bones comply. 

 

Liam comes forward to tip the lights to another angle, and the shadows fall different across their skin. He pauses to run a hand down Harry’s side, eyeing him up, and Harry feels like an animal under the gaze. A show dog or a draft horse. Not a prize winner. 

It’s not the attention he minds, so much as the critical look in Liam’s eyes, running over the knots and freckles of Harry’s back. 

The judgement, either seen or just perceived, has him trying to arch up straighter, tuck in his stomach and pose a little more artfully. It all feel strained, but he tries, and the closeness of Z’s body casts shadows that help him feel hidden. 

Lou is curled up on the couch, watching them with bleak intent in his eyes. Harry steals glances when the posture allows him, and finds each time his eyes are fixed between Z and Liam, sometimes darted along the path of the camera. Harry wonders if from his angle he can see what the pictures are going to come out looking like. He doesn’t wonder why he’s not looking at his own body, but he finds he’s grateful. 

 

They take a long enough break for Z to dart away and light up, and when he turns, Harry can see the design drawn across his back is a stretch of constellations. 

Z offers him the joint when he returns, and it makes Harry feel like he’s passed some kind of initiation. On the inhale, he discovers it’s rich with the sour taste of tobacco, and it’s an effort to hold it in. His tongue feels like rubber when he breathes out. 

He tells himself it helps, and the pressure of eyes not on him starts fading, vignetting, and a porcelain peace begins its descent.

Falling slowly, like snow, like courage, to collect upon his shoulders. 

 

He stays while Liam connects his camera to his desktop, lingering in the doorframe before Z hands him a beer bottle and clinks the neck of his against it. It feels almost like a peace offering, with Lou still staring daggers into Z’s back from his place on the couch. 

Harry finds them to be soft daggers, dull blades, as Z crossed back over to sling an arm around the smaller one’s stiff shoulders. 

It’s an intimate arrangement, Lou sinking into Z’s side and breathing in a mouthful of smoke in the process, joint lit in his hand. There’s no discernible place for Harry, and he shrinks back down the hall.

He finds Liam in a ramshackle study, desktop sitting on a foldout table, camera charging off to the side. Liam turns his head to see Harry come in, some naive child sticking close to teacher’s side. 

He stays in the boxy little room long enough to see the images start to get retouched, Liam smoothing the lines of their bodies, now with his mousepad rather than his guiding fingers. 

The constellations are on his back too, and seeing them mapped out across the screen makes his skin prickle, as if he can feel the stars burning between his shoulder blades. 

As Liam adjusts the colours, bringing out the deep purples in the background that Harry hadn’t at first noticed, he finds the distant riot in his head take a breath, and a step back. It’s a comfort to the nervous shying of his guts, reassuring his unsettled mind that it is turning into something a lot closer to artistic than he had thought. 

 

“Z uses a lot of the stuff we shoot for his portfolio. He actually poses for a few local rags, and he books auditions every few weekends,” Liam says, a ramble of a conversation, and it flinches Harry out of his slowing paranoia. 

“Actual modeling gigs?” Harry asks, and immediately wonders if it comes off as rude. 

“Not quite as indie as this, yeah,” Liam says. From their side-by-side stance, Harry can see a spattering of pink scars snaking out from beneath Liam’s tank top. Harry’s head is still far away and hazy, and the tiny markings turn into constellations too. 

 

Later, he tries to sneak out, head low and arms at his sides. He does his best to slink unnoticed, but he can feel the weight of Z’s eyes on him, tailing him, all amber. Amber, and he feels it slowing him, nerves all tight, waiting for the red light. 

 

“Where’d they even find you, anyway?” Lou asks from the couch, and they’re red words, red flashing. When Harry looks up and over, it’s to a scowling expression and a cross-legged slouch. 

“At the Tomboy,” Harry answers. “After my shift,” he adds carefully, and Lou levels him with a quirked eyebrow. 

“Did you fuck him to get the job?” Lou asks, and it’s a breeze of words that has Harry’s stomach twisting in on itself. 

“Not everyone has to,” Liam says smoothly, reentering the room with his camera strap swinging from his hands. 

“Right. In your fucking dreams,” Lou says from the couch, and his tongue has taken on a slimy quality. Harry’s only slightly relieved it’s not aimed at him in the moment. 

“Quit harassing him,” Liam counters, and Lou shrugs it off. 

 

Harry leaves to the sound of biting banter, and walking out into the night feels like walking into a cloud of saliva, mouth vapor swirled together from the summer air, clinging to his clothes with hooked and desperate hands. 

He falls exhausted into sleep, and dreams of catty tongues and sandpaper hands coursing up and down his back. 

 

⚙ ⚙ ⚙ 

 

His workdays slip by like dirty water, lines in the gutter making their way into sewer grates and potholes. 

The club isn’t quite as hellish and rampant as weekend shifts, the club goers a little less inclined to over drink, and over share with the workers. 

His skin always feels a little less slimy after shifts where he hasn’t had drunk patrons plastering themselves across him, plastered as their own posture, and he’s forced to unstick their hands and slap on a smile, like plasters. 

It’s not as bad as he makes it out to be in his head, usually on the route to work, and less on the way home again. His fingers still slip and slime on the inner rim of glasses, ice melting at the bottoms, but his feet find their traction on the club floors, to and from the kitchen, and behind the bar. He pushes thoughts of bleak apartment photo shoots from his head, and they don’t try to squirrel back in as he keeps himself busy. The extra cash sitting in his wallet, and in his account shakes some of the knots from his shoulders, dislodging them like snow from windshields. 

 

But the weather goes to hell, and his mental state of peace follows suite. 

He blames the clouds, because the clouds are sitting low and smug and taunting him, begging to be blamed. He blames the rain and the way it soaks into the ground and seeps into the soles of his shoes, and puckers his toes. 

His dreams run fussy with quick snaps of trying to remember lock combinations, misreading street names, flashing buttons in elevators. 

He combats them by waking early, rising before the sun and treading queasy into the day. 

His nerves are shredded as the weekend creeps up on him, crawling on skinned knees to lock calloused hands around his hips. Friday shakes him, and come Saturday he’s more rattled than stirred. 

While the coffee brews he debates just calling Liam to cancel, but bailing sounds worse, and he can’t find the nerve or the guts or any of the vital parts to pick up the phone. 

 

Instead, he shows up early, just after the sun has blistered out below the horizon, and the edges of buildings are still holding on to that peeling gold. 

His skeleton feels like it’s pulling itself tight inside his skin, trying to become something smaller, and he jumps when the door swings open and he’s welcomed inside. Everything immediately feels off once he’s through the door, and the inside of his head seems to shimmer with lightning bugs and panic. 

 

He crosses his arms while Liam talks to him about his week, and he does his best to answer the small talk questions that come. Harry’s fingers dig in enough for white fingernail marks to pop up from the pressure, and he tells himself it’s helping him to concentrate on the words and responses coming from Liam’s mouth. In a way it is, and it almost holds the anxious tugging under his skin and in his skull at bay. 

Despite the effort, every part of him seems to be humming and muttering little pleas to keep his clothes on. 

One tiny voice that seems to live behind his molars keeps whispering, imploring how easy it would be to just voice it out loud, and ask to reschedule. But there’s another louder voice, insistent in a way that’s almost child-like, telling him to stay silent. To voice it aloud would be asking for attention, and special treatment, and the notion makes Harry’s stomach sway nauseously. 

 

Everything is blue-lit this time, and he’s grateful for it. A criss-crossed string of blue bulbs is hooked up against the wall, and it’s a neon kind of soothing, even through the chaos stirring up currents between his ears. 

He’s able to pick out one of the factors playing in to the wrong-feel of the apartment, as Liam is humming and settling a floral arrangement on one of the side tables. Lou is there, curled cat-like in his corner of the couch again, but Z isn’t, and hasn’t emerged from a room down the hall in the time Harry’s been there. It’s almost comforting, being able to pick out an external difference, something other than his own manic brain causing things to feel strange and not as they have been. 

Liam seems to pick this observation from his mind with pointed teeth. 

“Z’s not going to be doing the shoot with you tonight,” he says, his voice cutting smoothly like scissors through velvet. 

Harry scans his brain for something appropriate to say in response, and through the clatter comes up with, “he have another modeling gig?”

“He does, actually,” Liam affirms, and the touch of pride in his chest has Harry wondering what exactly their relationship is structured from. The thought pulls his eyes towards the boy on the couch, and he wonders how that aspect fits in too. 

As he wonders, he misses Liam’s next sentence, the clatter in his head too distracting to multitask, and he tunes back in in time to catch, “you don’t mind.” 

“What?” Harry asks, tongue a little foamy where it sits beneath his teeth. 

“I’d like to shoot a duo piece, with you and Lou, if you don’t mind,” Liam repeats, roping his words together a little slower, eyes all dark and watchful over Harry’s face. Harry feels that he’s being pressed for a reaction, and does his best to offer one up. 

“Yeah, sure, of course,” he turns his head just enough to glance at the boy on the couch again, doing everything he seem to can to convey disinterest. “If that’s okay with you,” he adds, and Lou sniffs. 

“Why wouldn’t it be,” he says, and it’s a brush-off of a conversation ender. 

“Right, yeah,” Harry says a little mutely, and it takes an effort to remind himself that there’s no beef tacking itself between them. He knows it’s his own tightly wound mind that’s acting as if there’s some conflict, and pushing the idea that he’s not welcome here. He knows, but as time stretches by, and the boy on the couch continues to ignore him, it feels less and less true. 

 

Liam’s idea for the duo piece involves more prep work than the other, simpler times Harry’s taken part in. Simpler in detail, simpler in state of mind, and he discovers a growing knot of worry living in his gut. He pictures it having hair and teeth before he can stop himself - a little tumour of anxiousness, stirring. 

As Liam unfolds and spreads a clear plastic tarp across the floor, Harry finds himself scanning the room for other details. 

There’s a tidy plastic box sitting on the coffee table, filled with a small collection of paintbrushes, and what Harry thinks are makeup palettes. It’s sitting too close to where Lou is curled on the end of the couch, and Harry doesn’t risk another look over. Instead he stands, feeling too big for the room and unwilling to have too many eyes on him. 

In the corner beside the couch, are several thin metal pipes are neatly lined up along the floor.

Liam gets the tarp smoothed out along the floor, and Harry finds himself toeing the edge of it. 

“Don’t want to get the floors wet,” Liam says, and it’s not enough of an explanation to put Harry at any kind of ease. For some reason, he still feels like he’s caught up in the bustle of his last shift, wading his way through smaller and sweating bodies, faking smiles and collecting bills. 

“What are we doing?” Harry asks. At work when the floors get wet, it’s spilled drinks and crushed ice. Sometimes piss and blood, but he tries not to think about the bad nights. 

“I’m shooting you with water falling overhead. I haven’t decided if I’m going to make a few stop-motion sets to show the water beads,” Liam says. He’s clipping together the pipes as he explains, pausing in his practice to gesticulate vaguely. 

“Jesus,” Harry says, a bit in awe at the strangely engineered device Liam is putting up while he talks. It’s a long series of connected poles, with a splayed base almost like a hatstand. A small rubber tube stretches up along the length, and comes together in a ring at the top, like a shower head. 

“I’ll have the exposure up this time too, so you’ll look pretty washed out on camera,” Liam continues. “I’ve got eyeliner on the table for that.” Harry nods like he understands, and Liam seems satisfied. Harry feels less than satisfied, fretting strangely about the string of blue bulbs along the walls, and whether they seem to be far enough away from the reach of where the water wants to go. 

He pushes down on the nervousness, reprimanding himself to have a little faith. Despite the first impression Harry had of him - a little smokey, and smarmy - Liam’s proved himself to be competent, capable, and so sure of his own inspirations. He seems to have a confidence in his own movements, something that rouses a concoction of respect and envy in Harry’s stomach. 

The calm sweep of the reprimand doesn’t last, and the uneasy queasiness slides back in, greasy and cantankerous. 

Liam snaps the last piece into place and turns, putting his hands on Harry’s shoulders. In response Harry feels like plasticine, and lets himself be guided back towards the couch. Lou doesn’t budge from his corner, and Harry sits down on the opposite side, wondering how it is that Lou can simply take up space without tearing himself to pieces about it like Harry does. 

“How are you with makeup?” Liam asks. Harry blanks searching for an answer, and the tumour pipes up, gnashing through his intestines. 

“It’s fine,” Liam says briskly, taking his silence as an acceptable answer. “Lou’s got you.” Then, to Lou, “I just need dark liner, fill the lashes a bit but keep it light, bit of eyeshadow but nothing too intense. It’s fine if it runs.” Harry blinks through the wave of commands.

“You mind if I smoke up first?” Lou asks, and his voice sounds grey and bored. Liam waves a permissive hand in his direction, and Lou snakes a lighter out of his pocket, and swiftly pulls himself off the couch, disappearing down the hall. 

Harry can’t help but feel that his own closeness is what prompted the exit, but he holds back any verbal comment, instead cracking open the plastic box, and examining the contents. 

“You’re good, you know,” Liam comments offhandedly, and encourages Harry’s eyes to slide up and find him, now clicking his camera strap into place. 

“Good?” Harry repeats, and wonders if he sounds as thick as he feels. He imagines bundling all the too-fast thoughts and unease together, and stuffing them behind the couch, into closets and beneath rugs.

“At modeling. You’ve got the right posture for it,” Liam says. Harry’s struck with the sudden realization that Liam’s been dumbing himself down to talk to him. That he has terms and thoughts stashed away in his head, but isn’t bothering to bring them out to put on display. Thoughts and terms that would be wasted on Harry, and it stings a little, makes him feel young and stupid. The unease struggles beneath the rug, and begins to pool from underneath the closet doors. 

There’s a lapse then, a stilling quiet, and it’s the perfect time for Harry’s tongue to gather courage and voice that he’s feeling unsteady, anxious for no reason, tiptoeing towards neurotic as he tends to do, but the words don’t come. They stay drowning down his throat until Lou pads back from down the hall, shoulders a little looser. 

 

Harry can almost sense a snap on the tip of Lou’s tongue, an electric hiss at the sight of the opened plastic box in front of Harry on the couch, but as he watches, it’s bitten back and swallowed down. It’s a paranoid touch of forgiveness, and Harry stays immobile as Lou sits down on the couch beside him, closer than he was before. 

“C’mere then,” Lou says, and Harry can hear the smoke laced into his breath, and how it softens his words around their edges. 

 

The edged push of the makeup brush is smoke laced too, and Harry can feel the weight of it in his own lungs as Lou picks through the box and starts laying colours on his skin. The tip of the eyeliner seems skate dangerously close to his water line, but he bites back any resistance, and does his best to apply a mask of calm, reason, at the same time. 

There’s a glaze of intent glossing across Lou’s eyes, and up close, Harry can pick out just how blue they are, dark and deep, reflecting the blueness of the string lights across the room. It’s a reassuring colour, even when Lou won’t shift them into even a slight acknowledgment, and they stay concentrating on his task of outlining Harry’s own eyes. 

 

His lids feel wet and gauzy by the time Lou’s finished with him, heavier too, like blinking is taking more of an effort. He says thank you, because it feels like it’s expected, and Lou shrugs in response, digging a small mirror from the box and focusing on himself. 

Liam gestures for Harry to rise, so he does, and his stomach swoops and panics with the motion. Standing, he’s hit with another wave of inner pleas to not do this, to not be subjected to cameras and other bodies pushing into his space. Again, he stomps down on them, and takes a breath. It slides into his lungs all pale and oily, and slides back out shallow. 

 

His shirt comes off next, and he can feel the red indentations of creases along his shoulders, and the tiny scratches from where his fingers were latched on to his forearms. Liam guides him onto the tarp and prods him into position, and the pink and red and white gets washed over with blue. It’s enough of a disguise to hide the shaking in Harry’s fingers, at least temporarily. 

 

Harry can feel the electric heat of Lou’s body next to him. It’s different than it had been with Z. Hotter and redder, and Lou’s expression digs needles of implication into Harry’s head that the smaller body is itching to get further away from him rather than closer. 

Lou stands stiff and rigid at first, then melts into fluid and poised shoulders under Liam’s command. It leaves Harry standing stock-still, mannequin and useless in his wake. 

 

Liam braces them for the water, but it’s still a shock, sending Harry’s fingernails flinching back into his cuticles, and his skin breaking out in crawling waves of goose flesh. Lou hisses his tongue between his teeth, and the freezing bite of water is enough to usher his body closer in towards Harry’s. 

Their arms brush together in a damp ripple, and there’s warmth to be sought out in the contact, so Harry inches in towards it, taking in the pink flush of Lou’s bare chest, painted lavender under the blue lights. 

The water is cold and cringing, and a sudden bout of terror and insecurity collapses against the inner wall of Harry’s skin as he shivers.

_“Fuck.”_ It slips past Harry’s lips before he can help himself, and Lou’s eyes flick up to rush over him, both wary and weighty, this time alit with a touch of smug approval, and he sidles his body in even closer. The new position has their legs coming together, interweaving and flicking in like birds wings, and the new pressure of expectation has Harry’s head reeling. 

A soft dusting of confusion paints across Lou’s cheeks when he brushes them together and doesn’t find what he’s looking for. He reaches an arm up, periwinkle, the spaces between his fingers navy in the lighting, and closes his hand around Harry’s wrist. Lou’s fingers now wound around his pulse-point, Harry’s heart kicks up in terror, too fast and flitting to be reigned in and corralled. 

 

“Alright, now get in close together, Lou, tip your chin up so you’re almost about to kiss,” Liam instructs, and it’s a lightning bolt of words that streaks and splinters through Harry’s skull. 

Lou does as he’s told, form perfect, and Harry does his best to stutter alongside him. Up close, he can pick out the fanning of Lou’s eyelashes, dark and butterflying, and his own head feels much too big and warped and mothy for them to be this close together. Another cascade of water dousing them, and Harry hisses in an uneven breath as Lou’s lips part downward in a silently startled oval. Harry can feel the water running down his chin and chest in ruins, unsalted but teary, and he shivers roughly. 

Their bodies touch, chests frozen and sliming and rising against one another. Harry can hear the shutter clicking, and he can feel the motion creaking low in his ears, where they connect to his jaws and crack internally.

“You can kiss if you want,” Liam says, a blasé suggestion that sinks itself, deep-set into Harry’s mouth like a festering root canal waiting to happen. 

There’s grey-light and offering in Lou’s eyes, and his mouth is still wet and parted. Harry can hear the shutter clicking to their side, and thinks of insects hitting windshields. 

It sets in that he hasn’t been breathing. Lou moves up on his toes and touches their mouths together, and Harry’s lungs feel tar-soaked and hollow. Lou angles his head to the side, and Harry imagines Liam is getting the right shot. His throat is restricting, airless.

He kisses back for a moment, and Lou locks a hand around his waist. The motion of the kiss makes Harry feel like he’s gaping, fishlike, and the water puckering their skin only adds to the image.

Lou slots his tongue in between Harry’s lips, and Harry takes in a rattling ghost of a breath that racks through his body and sends his shoulders wrenching inwards and breaking them apart.

Lou looks up at him, lashes soaked and eyeliner running weakly at the corners, confusion blending in with the shimmer on his lids. He looks to Liam for instruction, and Harry does too, the breath now choking in his throat and lurching through his stomach on its way back down. 

All Liam gives them is the camera lowering a fraction of an inch and a look that matches Lou’s expression of mild confusion. Lou turns back to face him, and Harry manages to suck in another ragged watery breath under the interrogation lights of Lou’s eyes. 

“What’s wrong with you?” Lou snaps, and Harry can feel a warm weight lodge itself in his throat as he tries to breathe steadily through it. It doesn’t happen, and his lungs break shallowly. A dim noise picks up inside his sinuses, whispering that if he tilts his head back, holds at the right angle, he might drown in the mess of water sprinkling over them. 

“Because if you’ve taken some weird shit, you can just leave,” Lou continues angrily.

“Tone it down a notch,” Liam sighs, and moves to come towards Harry. His feet move plastically over the wet tarp, and they squeal. 

“I’m not fucking around with a cokehead or a speedfreak or whatever the fuck _this_ is,” Lou says, and Harry can feel the bite of his breath, like stinging nettles. Thistles and cactus needles that underline that he’s the _this,_ he’s the problem, the disruption, and he hates it. 

“I’m not high, _fuck,”_ Harry spits out, a saliva-rich blurb of words that falls thickly to the floor. They meld in with the water, and the smell of damp plastic is suddenly nauseating. 

“Then _what_ are you doing?” Lou exclaims, taking a crooked step backwards. Harry’s own stomach flinches at the movement, feeling the threat of slipping and falling, and twisting. 

“I’m having a _fucking_ panic attack, just give me a minute!” Harry shouts back and Liam steps in, separating their bodies like a barricade. 

“It’s fine, just breathe, have a seat and you’ll be fine,” Liam says, and the smooth rush of his voice pulls Harry away from the shocked expression on Lou’s face, and how it contorts into something softer, and guiltier. The water has stopped falling, and Harry can’t tell how long it’s been shut off. 

 

A rush of quiet comes on, settling like volcanic ash over the apartment. It amplified the static shrieking through Harry’s head, and he can feel the dust sinking into his pores, petrifying him and suffocating his skin. 

 

Liam excuses himself to get something from the kitchen, and he comes back pushing a jug of water into Harry’s hands, which are almost able to fake the coordination to hold it without shaking. He’s nowhere near prepared to bring it to his mouth, throat too swollen to swallow anyway, so he holds it and watches it slosh. 

Liam leaves again, and comes back in with a towel. He must have brought one for Lou as well, because the other boy perches on the far arm of the couch ruffling his hair while Harry’s fingers clam and shake against the plastic.

 

He finds that he is able to start breathing again, and the calculated inflation and fall of his lungs takes over. 

Embarrassment comes on then, seeping red-hot and orange, slowly creeping to consume and burn his body. 

Liam creeps in slowly too, and the sudden hand on Harry’s shoulder has him jumping. 

“Easy,” Liam says, and Harry feels like he’s a spooked mustang, corralled and legs all twisted in rope. “You feeling any better?” Harry shrugs, and displaces Liam’s hand. He wants to apologize, wants to cut and run and not come back, but instead he nods a little, and takes a long drink. 

Lou shifts closer while he’s swallowing, and lowers himself on the couch cushion beside him, towel hugged around his stomach.

“I’m sorry,” Lou says, and Harry shakes his head, trying to dispel the words and keep the apology from reaching him, and sinking hooked teeth that feel like pity into his skin. He dispels tiny droplets of water, too. “I wouldn’t have said any of that shit if I had known.” It’s concrete-grey but genuine. 

“It’s fine,” Harry says, and he already hates the sympathetic look he knows he’ll find if he tips his eyes upwards. 

“Is it?” Lou asks, and the edge of his leg is almost touching Harry’s knee. He imagines the thread patterns weaving out to join each other. 

“Just got a bit overwhelmed,” Harry mutters, and Lou offers an attempt at a smile. It’s the first open expression he’s seen from him clothed, and he tries to convince the muscles in his face to mirror the expression. It falls a little flat, but Lou doesn’t mention it, and Harry’s grateful.

“I didn’t think you were the type who was used to this sort of thing,” Lou says after a moment while Harry breathes and Liam sits in the armchair across from them. 

“Was it the shoot that set you off?” Liam asks, and Harry shrugs, a little brokenly. 

“No, my head was feeling weird all day,” he answers, and tries to meet Liam’s eyes, dark and unbelieving. 

“Sure this didn’t help,” Liam says, voice leaden, and Harry takes it. “God knows it still unnerves some people who have been doing it for ages.” 

“It’s kind of really weird to jump in doing this sort of thing,” Lou adds.

“Yeah,” Harry agrees quietly. “Especially with someone you’ve just met.” Lou breathes out slowly, and pivots slightly so that he’s facing Harry a little more straight on.

“And I know I’ve been a bit of an ass. That hasn’t helped.” He doesn’t apologize for it, and for some reason that makes the admission easily for Harry to accept. 

“I’m not so good at meeting people anyway,” Harry offers. 

“You’re doing fine,” Liam says, his voice smoothing over. “Thank you for coming tonight, but for god’s sake, feel free to call and cancel if you don’t feel good.” Harry nods, sheepish and embarrassed. There’s a small silence, and he takes it to sort through words in his head to string together, in any hopes of explaining how it is that he simply never feels like he has that option. 

“I have more than enough to work with from this,” Liam says, patting his camera and Harry has given up on voicing an explanation. Liam rolls his camera over in his hands, and Harry reads it as a free pass, a dismissal. Harry nods, and Liam stands, making towards the hall with his camera. 

“I’m going to upload these, and edit a bit. You’re welcome to stay and hang out for a while,” he says, and Harry nods again, the last of the shakes starting to pack up and leave as well, leaving him feeling a little hollow, and smaller than he should. 

Liam heads down the hall, and his exit reinstates the closeness of Lou’s leg to Harry’s on the couch, and their neighbouring breaths seem louder in the now-quiet room. 

 

“It gets easier doing shoots once you know the person better,” Lou says, and it sounds like a tentative suggestion, a one-time offer that would be snatched away if he blinked and missed it. 

“Do you think you’re going to come back?” Lou asks before Harry has the chance to respond. 

“I think I might,” he replies, careful to place his words delicately, and not make promises that anxious windings could unravel later. “It’s nice to have something on the side.” 

“I figured,” Lou says, and Harry looks at him, a little puzzled. They’re both still damp and blue-lit, and it’s cool but not quite soothing. 

“If you were going to get scared off, I assumed you’d leave the first night,” he explains. “We’ve had a few come and look through Liam’s portfolio then just high-tail it out of here.” Harry nods his understanding.

“This isn’t what I thought it was going to be,” he tries, and it seems to be accepted well enough. “I thought this was kind of - sleazy - ” he gauges Lou’s expression for a negative reaction, and finds nothing. “Kind of sleazy going in, but it’s not what I expected.” 

“Yeah. I mean, it’s plenty sleazy, but it passes as artistic,” Lou says. “Liam knows what he’s doing.”

“He seems like a good guy,” Harry says, and Lou nods.

“Can’t introduce him to anyone, though,” he says, traces of a laugh stroking the sides of his words. “They always decide they fancy him better, and leave me on my own.” Harry feels like he’s being allowed to see past the crack in the door, a peek into what lives behind, and he stays silent, afraid to scare off the feeling. 

Lou pulls a pipe off the table then, and offers it, digging a lighter from his pocket and grimacing at the damp press of denim. 

 

Smoking turns the silence silver, and clouds Harry’s eyes as well as his throat. It works ash-grey fingers into the knots in his shoulders too, and rolls the tension off in coiling waves. 

 

“I’m heading home,” Lou says after a while. Harry thinks it might have been a few months, with cobwebs and cacti growing and collecting around them. “Come with if you want.” Harry tracks him with his eyes as he stands and stretches, and makes towards the door, where his jacket is lying in a head atop his shoes on the floor. 

A stargazing magazine lies spread-eagle across the table. There’s a moment while Harry just stares at the pipe in his hand, bowl still cherrying in a far-away manner, and he wonders as it turns all ashy why craving to slink home alone had seemed so tempting before. 

 

“That’s Z’s, you can just leave it there,” Lou says, and Harry’s swept up in a tidal wave of smoke, placing the pipe back on the table guiltily. It’s blue and dark and swirling, all ocean-coloured and deep, and it takes Harry a moment to find his feet, swaying upon standing. 

“Sea legs,” he says to Lou in explanation, and is graced with a bark of laughter, pure like thunder claps, and a rushing wave of feeling alright fans out and pools around him. 

 

They walk down the building’s stretch of hall together, Lou pulling ahead slightly and Harry following, dragging his feet. It’s such a blatant change from the first sight Harry had of him, shoulders down and winding in from the parking lot, eyes fierce and body low. 

Now, he’s still slouching, but it looks quiet and easy, and as they approach the exit, Harry can imagine little tendrils of smoke rising up out of both of their lungs, stringing them along, leading them into the night air. 

Outside it’s humid, with a sticky dark blue breeze creeping damp fingers into their clothes.

 

Lou’s apartment is only a block away, a dip down a side street, and it feels like an eternity and a stone’s throw, as they walk and approach the new building. 

 

Harry tries to chat through the cotton stitches in his tongue, and Lou’s voice has picked up an agreeable pitch when he responds.

“I took photography and production courses with Liam a few years back. I dropped out, and he’s finishing his degree in the fall. I picked up business and marketing the next year.”

“That as boring as it sounds?” Harry asks, immediately wondering if he’s crossed a line. The smoke and heat is just catching up with his head and his words, and sending it into a slow spiral.

“Nah. I’m aiming for advertising. I’ve got an apprenticeship with a partner company that works with the university next summer. Mostly ad printing and slogan campaigning.” Harry nods along as Lou speaks. It’s a rehearsed answer, and he understands the tone. A mimicry of adulthood, and Lou pulls it off as well as the rest of them, with Harry left pining after the structure and organization of the routined plans. A spike of nerves and mania lurches in the back of his mind, but he pushes it down, breathing in a lungful of the crusty night instead, and pressing down on the threat of an inescapable future in the process. 

The meandering of words tapers off, having served its purpose of filling time as they approach the apartment door. 

 

The implications of following Lou inside, and letting the door click shut behind them sinks in, settling just beneath the surface, and Harry shivers. 

 

Inside, he declines the offer for a beer from the fridge, or a cup of tea when it’s offered, almost jokingly. It feels forced, and obligatory, and a waste of time, while the weight of being alone together descends. 

 

Lou motions him towards the couch, and he sits, knees pressed together, taking in the decor. Most of the walls are blank, but twin bookshelves on the opposite wall sit stuffed to the brim with books and coiled journals. 

Lou joins him on the couch, placing a gap between their bodies that feels like a challenge to Harry. He looks at the space at his side between their bodies, and breathes in, imaging the smell of damp plastic. He breathes out smoke and summer air, and Lou tiptoes his fingers across the couch cushion.

 

Harry kisses him. It feels like he ought to, and he lets himself be kissed back. The images caught behind his eyelids of Lou’s body underneath the blue string lights, wet and flushed is a pushing encouragement. 

Their tongues rub together, smoke-stained and tentative at first, easing into something with more rhythm, piano and bass as Lou inches his body into an arch that presses into Harry’s side as he moves to comply. 

“I have a roommate,” Lou says, breathing a little askew when they separate. Harry feels flushed and starstruck, and fumbles for a reply. 

“Let’s move this to the bedroom. Don’t really want to go much further on the couch,” Lou says before he has a chance to for a response, brain alight with yellow warmth and grey stars. 

Harry doesn’t word a reply, and Lou looks at him questioningly as he stands, and offers his hand. Harry takes it, feeling earthy and soft in the grip, and lets himself be pried off the couch. Their bodies bump together as he stands, and they laugh, chasms of smoke and weightlessness lining through veins and the soles of feet. 

Lou’s bedroom is just down the hall, and Lou doesn’t bother switching the light switch on when they walk in. Harry tries to make out the shapes and shades for a moment before he’s bumped towards the bed, and collapses onto it. Lou climbs on beside him, and Harry inches to the side to make room. 

Now caught horizontally, Harry’s swept up in the niceness of it. The cotton stitching in his head lolling gauzy against the fibers of Lou’s sheets, navy blue and mesh. 

Lou is a soft weight beside him, their heads both tipped and noses brushing as their tongues press lazily. It’s a pressure and a rhythm that’s just right, and just in tune with the high settling around Harry’s shoulders. Rolling clouds passing through his chest, and their motions are perfectly synced up. 

Strange stoned thoughts are swarming and swaying through Harry’s head as they kiss, and they inspire his hands to slide down to Lou’s waist. Lou follows his lead and slips a hand up and across to Harry’s back, and draws them in tighter. 

Lou’s energy starts to change, and Harry is acutely aware of it. The close wrappings of their bodies rocks inwards, and Harry thinks of cocoons and claustrophobia. He pulls back for a moment, and Lou watches him go, pupils black holes in the dark room. 

“Hot,” Harry explains, and worms his way out of his shirt. Lou mimics him, and presses their skin together smoothly. It’s a rush of heat, a splash of gasoline that ignites and festers the fire in Harry’s stomach. It’s still a little uneasy, treading on coals, but the light scratching of Lou’s fingernails against his back soothes the flames. 

The apartment is soundless, and Harry wonders if the roommate is going to come home, going to mind and separate them. Lou moves his hip a certain way, pressing a little closer, and the thought of separation slams into Harry, catches him around the throat in a locked and awful threat. 

A growling, whiny sound works out of Lou’s throat as he bites down on Harry’s lip, nipping at it and lapping the pinkness away with his tongue. It’s too hot and terrible and Harry’s hips twitch, caught again in a short-nailed embrace. It brings a stuttering gasp to his lips, caught up and swept away by Lou’s tongue. 

The motion makes him squirm, and Lou climbs his way on top, first hooking his leg over Harry’s waist, then hauling himself up until he’s caught in a sideways straddle, his mouth staying low to suck and nip at Harry’s collarbones. 

The change in position has Harry hesitating, feeling the fire catch at the back of his throat, and the air fades to a slow burn in his lungs. His motions still, and Lou pinches his irritation into Harry’s hip, tightening his legs on either side and and rocking his pelvis down in one violent movement. 

It’s urging and frustrated and feisty and stops Harry entirely, arms falling to the mattress, palms turned upwards in a limp plea. 

Lou moves up to his throat, licking a path up to his chin, then pulling off, and moving in to suck Harry’s bottom lip between his teeth. It elicits no response other than a shaky inhale, and he rolls to the side, pinning Harry’s body to the mattress with his thighs.

“Are you enjoying this?” Lou asks, and Harry stirs, pushing himself away from the heat of Lou’s body. Lou picks up on the way his hands are bared to face the ceiling, and grabs them in his own, pushing down and looking him in the eye from a pressured angle.

He wants to say yes, something to appease the clammy fingers locked around his own, but the affirmation refuses to move past his throat.

“What’s your problem all of a sudden?” Lou pushes, and his voice is just as clammy, kiss-thick, lips swollen. 

“I don’t have a problem,” Harry says, and feels a queasy laugh threaten to follow the line, which has the distinct bitter taste of a pure lie. 

“What did I do?” Lou demands, and from behind the mask of offense, Harry is getting notes of doubt, worry, and a kind of blue distress.

“Nothing,” Harry says, but his muscles keep pulling tight, and away from the body next to him. 

“Nothing,” Lou repeats, mundane and white-washed with an insecure finish. 

“I’m just not into rough stuff,” Harry mutters, and he peels his skin up off the sheets, and slimes his way back into his shirt. 

There’s a grossly long pause before Harry can hear the springs of the mattress squealing as they shift. 

“So you’re leaving?” Lou asks, mirroring his actions and tugging his own shirt back over his head.

“Yeah, I think so,” Harry says. He isn’t all that sure of what he’s doing, but leaving sounds like a good idea. Crawling out of the room and out of the apartment and onto the street where there’s real air sliding around, maybe even a breeze. It’s not even that he wants to leave. The room, or the company, but it feels easy, almost comforting to have running away as an ever present option.

“You could stay,” Lou says, and his hand curls snake-like around Harry’s bicep. Harry thinks its origins are comforting, but the warmth is spreading through his body, like panic, all red flashing, and he has to stand up and break their contact. 

“We could not do rough stuff,” Lou continues, not recoiling or insulted like Harry thought he might be. 

“No, I know, I have to go,” Harry says, his tongue a ripe stutter, sending him off in some rhyming spiral that he clamps down on, moving towards the door.

“Someone fucked you over good,” Lou says. Harry waits for the bite to catch up with his tone, but it doesn’t come. Instead, it stays in some strange neutral, confrontational trying to twist itself into conversational. 

“Yeah, probably,” Harry says, and it’s as quiet as his voice can go while still projecting to someone else. 

“Definitely,” Lou confirms, and Harry glances back to see him sitting on the edge of the bed, knees drawn up. 

“Sorry,” Harry says after a moment, and leaves it. It doesn’t feel like an apology that’s warranted, and like he could never say it loud enough. So instead he turns tail and leaves the room.

 

“You said ‘no’, and that’s enough for me,” Lou says, and Harry flinches. He hadn’t heard him follow him out into the hall, and his voice is all ash and rasp. “Should be enough for anyone.”

“I didn’t say no,” Harry says after a pause leaks like black ink into cotton fibers, staining the air around them. 

“Your body did,” Lou says, and Harry shoves his feet into his shoes, flattening the backs with his heels. “Said it pretty loud, actually.” 

“I’m sorry,” Harry says again. There don’t seem to be any other words offering themselves up to his tongue. Lou sighs, and blends it in with a stiff shrug. 

“Just kiss me before you go, okay?” he asks quietly, and Harry can feel a bead of sweat trail its way down the curve of his spine. “Don’t leave feeling bad.” 

“Yeah,” Harry says. “Okay.” His feet don’t move from where they’re planted, aimed towards their escape into the night air, and Lou creeps in towards him, and cranes his neck. 

They kiss, their mouths too wet and familiar to create something chase.

“Come out with me?” Harry finds himself saying when they draw apart. “Think I just need a bit of fresh air.” Lou’s eyes are searching, worrying across his face, before he nods. 

“Fuck, you as high as I am?” he asks, and Harry shrugs. There’s a fuzzy bass-beat pulsing at the back of his skull, and Lou seems to be moving in time to it as they slide their shoes back on. 

 

“Think so,” he finally answers as Lou locks the door behind him. 

The air outside greets them with a clammy embrace again, and the knot in Harry’s stomach disintegrates, burned down to embers. 

They hook a side road away from the sound of the main stretch and one blaring horn, and a strained silence fills the time it takes for their steps to align. 

“Up for more?” Lou asks, roping the silence off, and Harry can see that he’s pulling a joint from the lining of his jacket. He groans at the sight of it, and the sound morphs itself into a laugh. 

“Always,” he responds, and a matching smile tweaks up the edges of Lou’s lips.

“Sorry,” he adds as Lou is guiding the joint to his lips and flicking his lighter. Lou shakes his head minutely, brushing off the apology. 

“I get freaked out easy,” he tries again, watching Lou take a drag and hold it, extending the joint between his fingers. He takes it easily and sucks in a breath of smoke. 

“That’s fine,” Lou exhales, coughing a little on the tail end of it. “Can’t be more socially awkward than me, so you have to have something.” Harry chokes and spits out the smoke he’s holding, laughing, and Lou smirks at him in response. 

“It’s cool,” Lou adds. “Forget it.” Harry takes another quick drag before passing the joint back.

“You sound like such a stoner,” he says once the smoke is leaking out between his teeth. 

“Takes one to know one,” Lou counters, and the night slides greasy and simple beneath their skin. 

 

Harry closes his eyes and breathes, his lungs stretching like saltwater taffy to hold in the clouds.

 

“Are you sure I didn’t do something wrong earlier?” Lou asks quietly. The city seems to be sighing around them, light pulsing with a glowing hush from streetlights, and distant car tires a far-away swish over asphalt. 

“No,” Harry answers, and grips tight on a bubble of courage, brushing their shoulders together. “I just get kind of freaked out with things going to fast, or too hard.” He braces himself for a laugh, or scoff, but instead receives the returned pressure of Lou’s shoulder against his. 

“That brought on by something in particular?” Lou asks, and Harry ducks his head a bit, and covers it with a cough. 

“I guess. I had this boyfriend...we used to mess around, at least,” he starts, and presses his back against the building. Lou turns to face him better.

“He was just, over the top with all that crap, and I was too stupid to ever really bring up that it wasn’t my thing,” Harry tries, and his voice cuts the last word in half, watering it down and it drips diluted from his tongue.

“Fuck. Did he ever...?” Lou cuts himself off, toeing his scuff shoe into the dirt. 

“No,” Harry says, shaking his head, and trying to shake off the unsaid question too. “No, nothing like that. He just...didn’t treat me very well in other areas. Didn’t really know how to deal with all my head shit.” He risks a glance at Lou who is nodding like he understands, and there’s something in the light of his eyes that convinces Harry that he does. 

“Now all that other stuff just reminds me of him. Always feel like I’m looking over my shoulder for him,” Harry says, breathing out shallowly. His head feels miles too big for his shoulders, balloon-stretched and unnecessary. 

“He looking for you or something?” There’s a bronze dig to Lou’s words, a harsh coating that Harry’s grateful for, too high and tired to bear the weight of being harsh himself.

“God. No. He doesn’t even know I’m in this city. Doubt he ever even thinks about me.”

“I’m sure he does. There’s no way he couldn’t, now and then,” Lou says. His words wash over Harry, stippled with confusion. He can’t decipher if it was meant to be a compliment, when it felt like something genuine. 

“That really doesn’t help. I think that makes me feel worse,” he says, and Lou makes a sympathetic sound. 

“Christ, Harry, we’ve all got ex-boyfriends. They’re not always ex-boyfriends, but we’ve all got something.” Harry looks over at him. There’s a blue string light shade of sadness caught in his eyes, and it resonates in Harry’s throat. 

“What’s your something?” Harry asks, because it feels like the only thing left besides crying. 

“Story for another time,” Lou brushes off, and Harry laughs quietly, on the inside holding tight to the promise of another time.

 

“Where do you need to get back to?” Lou asks after a slow silence waltzes its way around them.

“I’m down on the south side,” Harry says, gesturing vaguely with a hooked thumb. Lou hums unhappily. 

“Buses take forever to come from there this time of night,” he says, pulling his phone from his pocket and wincing. “Morning, rather. I can call you a cab if you want.” 

Harry can see a feeling coming towards him with a sewing needle, ready to stitch a frown onto his face, and he shakes it off. 

“Or crash at mine,” Lou adds, and it banishes thoughts of needlework. “If you’re okay with that.” 

“Yeah,” Harry answers. His head tips back and can lifts a finger to trace the path of a passing plane. “If you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind,” Lou says, and his head tips back to, watching as the plane’s lights flash, red and yellow. 

A quiet winding breeze comes on, and Harry watches as it graces over discarded packets and cigarette stubs on the asphalt, encouraging them to dance. Beside him, he can see Lou shiver, shoulders ducking inwards. 

Harry slides his jacket from his arms and hooks it around Lou’s back, who blinks at him, startlingly blue.

“No, it’s fine,” Lou begins to protest, and Harry tightens the jacket around him.

“Don’t,” he says, and Lou leaves it, laughing his thanks under his breath. 

“Let’s head back,” Lou says, and Harry nods. The breeze is coiling around them, encouraging the closeness of their bodies on the pavement, not quite hand in hand, but something threatening towards fully formed.

 

“I can take the couch if you want,” Lou is saying as they reenter the apartment. It’s dark, and shadows from the window flicker, pale blue creases in the blackness. Harry toes his shoes off and catches his balance against Lou’s waist. Lou puts a steadying hand on the small of his back, and they teeter gently, like the tops of trees. 

Harry doesn’t really want, and he twists his palms up to paw gently at Lou’s waist, closing the distance between their hips and holding himself there. Inside his head feels satin-lined and stuffed with fabric clippings, chiffon and lace and layers of gauze. 

Lou smiles against his neck, a tickle of embroidery thread, and a clock sometime is ticking softly, a hundred years or so before they move. 

 

It takes a silken coordination between their bodies to follow the path back to Lou’s bedroom. Inside it’s softer than it was before, a tiny sliver of moonlight pressing bashful against the windowpane. The light eases them beneath the covers, skin silver. 

Harry’s halfway to sleep as Lou nestles in alongside him. 

“Hope you find someone who treats you right,” Lou says, his voice still holding on to traces of pale smoke. The pad of his finger cautions up to trace against the back of Harry’s hand. 

“Yeah,” Harry breathes out, exhaustion digging in and holding tight. “Hope you do, too.” He turns his hand upwards before closing his eyes, feeling Lou’s hand slip overtop, their fingers just shy of interlocking. 

From far away but somehow all around them, a siren threatens, the sun on it’s way to paint everything in greens and yellows.  


End file.
